Course Title and Short Name

• Your course title and short-title are set with a particular format so any changes should be made via a request to COTROnline. 
• You can confirm accuracy by looking for key signifiiers: 
  • Course Name
  • Mode of Delivery: F2F or OL, etc.
  • Semester: Winter 2024, or 2024WI, etc.
  • Instructor: Your Name or Initials (YN) etc.

Course Description/Summary

The course description > course summary field displays for students in their Course Dashboard, (see below). As such, it is really important that this information is up-to-date.

• Even if you did not personally enter information here, it might be here from a previous copy of the course
• You can opt to provide no description, but you might as well as it provides a useful touchstone for students

We also encourage you to set a default course image, this helps differentiate your course from others in student course lists.

• The default start date for COTROnline courses is the Monday of the first week of classes, regardless of the first day of the actual class. 
  • For example: your course starts on Wednesday September 3rd, the start date for the course will be Monday September 2nd.
    
    
• This automatically populates your course with Mon-Sun weekly drop-down sections, labelled by the Mon-Fri dates of the week.
  
• • On a given week, the current section will be highlighted in green
  • **When you use the Collapsed Topics- Week (default) setting
    

Default Course Format

Adding Additional Sections

e.g. assignment information, course policies, etc.

e.g.

There are two methods to approach additional topics in your course. 

Method 1: For using the "Week" Structure

• Push the Start Date back one week for every extra topic (e.g. in the example above, the start date would be August 16, allowing three extra weeks to hold pre-course content)

This will ensure your Sections are automatically given the correct dates

Method 2: Using the "Topic" Structure

• Switch your Course format to "Topic". This removes the auto-date function from the weekly sections and allows you to add as many extra topics as you want. 
• This turns off the 'active week' function and the auto-date function - you will have to label your weekly sections yourself.

Ensure you have set your "Hidden Sections" setting to either:

1. "Hidden Sections are shown as not available" - meaning they are listed on the course page along with their descriptions, but they are faded and the activity content is not available.
   OR
2. "Hidden Sections are completely invisible" - meaning that they are completely hidden and unlisted on the course homepage.
   
   

For more detailed information on adjusting your Section Settings, see our Adding & Removing Sections help guide.

For detailed information on setting up your gradebook, please see our Gradebook section. 

---

Under Settings > Appearance, you can select whether or not to show the Gradebook to students.

The default should be set to Yes - your gradebook should be ready for student viewing by the first day of classes. 

If for any reason you will be making larger changes to the gradebook, you can temporarily switch this to No. However, you should inform students that you are hiding the gradebook so that they aren't wondering where it went!!